


told you i wasn't worth any of this

by moonbeatblues



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, M/M, and uh. big m9 vibes, anyway, i've been listening to a lot of go! child this morning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21789361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: there’s a moment where they’re all watching her— jester’s mouth drops open, she can see the little white gleams of her sharper front teeth, beau’s eyes keep darting between them— and she feels a little silly. she doesn’t even know harp, can’t even read sheet music (can any of them?), wouldn’t know the first thing to do with it.but jester’s open mouth curls into a smile, so wide it scrunches her cheeks up against her eyes.she buys it.(four scenes from ep 88)
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Fjord & Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Yasha
Comments: 2
Kudos: 105





	told you i wasn't worth any of this

**Author's Note:**

> title from half caff by go! child  
>   
> i might just keep doing these? and posting them in handfuls, but if i don't post them here they're at least on my tumblr

“he said it again. your real name.”

your real name.

_your real name._

-

maybe, caleb thinks, it’s the same in fjord’s mind, putting on a different voice and putting on a different name. not that fjord ever even gives a fake name when the rest of them do, too attached to the person he created for himself to let it go.

but vandren is alive, and fjord tried on his voice like a strange-fitting suit, tossed it aside when it damn well suited him to impress caduceus and his new mother. sought forgiveness from those he’d lied to the least and still, _still_ wouldn’t look caleb in the eye.

bren died by fire. bren _burned_ , aldric burned. ermendrud burned, with the only other two that carried it. with the cat that could only be a cat. caleb was born dirty and overgrown in a cell, and has been ever since it rolled, lilting and raspy, off of nott’s tongue. _veth’s_ tongue, if she decides it so. because caleb would never tell her which is real.

bren has been ash in no one’s mouth for sixteen years, and caleb is the phoenix.

—

it prickles at the back of yasha’s skull the moment caduceus picks up that flute/not-flute in the shop.

and her head’s so full of it, in that moment, how it feels like home. the shop’s slightly damp, a disconcerting amount of things are made of bone, and her chest aches with the simultaneous desire to grin and to cry.

“i can make it out of _that_ ,” the shopkeep says, gesturing with her too-long fingers to the polished ox-skull in the corner, and well, jester had said metal, hadn’t she? hopefully this will do.

there’s a moment where they’re all watching her— jester’s mouth drops open, she can see the little white gleams of her sharper front teeth, beau’s eyes keep darting between them— and she feels a little silly. she doesn’t even know harp, can’t even read sheet music (can any of them?), wouldn’t know the first thing to do with it.

but jester’s open mouth curls into a smile, so wide it scrunches her cheeks up against her eyes.

she buys it.

-

“jester,” she says haltingly, once they’ve left the shop, “i don’t know how to play harp.”

“oh!” jester says, and reaches for her hands. “that’s okay, i’m sure momma knows someone who can teach you, she sometimes has musicians play with her.”

her face feels absurdly warm all at once, thinking about making jester’s face light up like that again. the clean, uncanny gleam of those horns against the fire— what it’d be like, to be able to make something pretty with her own hands. something everyone could fall asleep to.

she lets herself imagine it for a long, lovely moment, taking first watch with beau and jester watching her play the harp, making their eyes flutter and fall shut. it’s dizzying, sometimes, how they look at her.

“okay,” she whispers, shy again. jester smiles, and yasha startles herself with the thought that she’d do anything to keep jester happy. startles herself with the sudden realization of falling, again, falling when she’s already down.

_oh, dear._

—

jester’s face falls, immediately— she doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise.

they’ve _always_ been roommates, always, and in that moment she hurts with the thought that it’s a thing of habit for beau, that beau thinks it’s a thing of habit for her. because it’s not, it really isn’t— beau makes her feel safe, happy, okay? it’s _always_ a choice, always.

and she immediately asks yasha if yasha wants to room with her instead, and even she’s not sure if she’s asking because she wants comfort from someone— and she missed yasha, too, of _course_ she did— or if she’s asking because she thinks it’ll make beau change her mind.

because even if she doesn’t want to sleep with jester anymore, beau still would want to sleep with yasha, right? beau likes her, at least, even if she doesn’t like jester like that.

and she hopes yasha doesn’t think she doesn’t want her there, or that she’s second best, it’s just that yasha and beau have this thing, right? and there’s just this part of her that aches when she sees it, and she just wishes that she could be there too, y’know? how yasha looks at beau during a fight, beau flirting with yasha all lazy and blood-stained, she just. wishes they’d look at her like that, sometimes. that’s all. wishes she could be a part of it, too.

and beau _does_ acquiesce, and she can’t get over the thought that beau _did_ look a little jealous at the thought of just her and yasha, like she really had thought it’d be everyone in their own room. and this thought curls traitorously in her skull— she knows there’s only one bed, and suddenly she can’t stop thinking about her and beau and yasha all piled into it, beau tucked up against her back with one arm slung over her waist, how they usually sleep, breathing loose and warm into the back of jester’s neck. yasha curled towards her— jester holding her hands to her chest, yasha’s the only one with hands almost as cold as her own, but much bigger, wrapped almost entirely around both of jester’s. her hair spread all loose on the one pillow, grey at the ends and dotted all through with those little blue flowers. how her mouth would be open just so when she drifted off, the thick line of blue running from lower lip down under her chin. she thinks she could sleep forever like that, boxed in and warm, caught between yasha and beau’s breathing.

beau does acquiesce, seems a little flustered about it like her head’s full of the same soft, dazed things as jester’s, and this feeling blooms open and wonderful in her chest at the thought.

—

it’s a weird night, for sure.

fjord’s used to sleeping next to caduceus by now— used to everyone’s sleeping habits, really, but deuces’s even more. funny— his snoring used to grate on fjord’s nerves just so, and now he’s almost not sure he could sleep without it.

caduceus, for as stilted and polite he used to get around all of them, has always slept like someone used to being alone. like someone still used to having their own bed, sprawling— a dangerous motion, truly, for someone so large— all long limbs and lazy tail, all unselfconscious in unconsciousness.

somewhere between the sail back to nicodranas and tonight, fjord had properly stopped caring, stopped thinking about the curious tension of waking up to caduceus breathing in his face. because caduceus rises earlier than him without fail, always has tea ready to shove into fjord’s hands.

he’s never quite gotten over just how strange caduceus can be, so simultaneously susceptible to awkwardness, to taking up too much space, and totally immune to it, how people balk at how blithely he’ll talk about death, talk about their not-quite-legal goddess like an old friend.

to be fair, fjord supposes it’s how he actually does think of her.

it’s how he’d like to think of her, one day.

tonight, it’s keeping him up.

he turns the crest over and over in his hands, wonders when exactly caduceus asked them to make it. it’s curious to think about, caduceus secreting something away like that, caduceus thinking of the design after they’d talked the first time, the second, the third.

_i wonder_ , he thinks, _if she’s changed, for him. if **i’ve** changed her for him._

and listen, fjord knows what a proposal looks like.

caduceus rolls a little closer in his sleep, and fjord wonders what he considers home, these days.

behind his closed eyes, he sees the blooming grove flooded ankle-deep, clear water pooling in the uneven topography of the graveyard. the pink tea-flowers bright underneath, like coral.

a house in nicodranas, on one of the low little cliffs overlooking the quay, a path cleared between the stubborn coast shrubs. dizzying green plants, long overgrown their planters and spilling over the cliffside, maintained both impeccably and with immense leeway. with respect, adoration. allowed to grow as they like, but cared for.

the odd gravestone among them.

the whistle of a teakettle on the fire.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hello @seafleece on tumblr!! i also take cr writing prompts there, now


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